My grandmother taught me a lot of things and amongst them was the idea of dream interpretation. I must confess that I was (and still am) skeptical about dream interpretation but I do admit it has been of use in my life. It was always kind of fun to look up a symbol from books such as The Interpretation of Dreams, Tabeer-ar-Royaa or even Kashaf-ul-majoob and connect them to the dates of the moon and other planets to see their influence.

Yes, before the naysayers crucify me with citations from research papers saying dreams have no valid interpretation etc. etc. let me assure them that I take a scientific perspective on dreams. As for their esoteric interpretation and symbolic/psychological value; I freely admit that such ideas are closer to art than an exacting science. On the notion of dreams, a poor ghazal came to mind.

A friend of mine with whom I often discuss things such as philosophy and art brought to my attention a lecture on Descartes. It got me thinking about the essential points concerning existence and that led to a consideration of the words of other thinkers such as Voltaire and Sartre (Aside: What’s with the French and thinking so hard about existence?). In all that thinking and between cups of coffee, I wondered why do I realize that I have an existence? I do not seek an answer for why we exist or what we are supposed to do since we exist. I asked why do we realize that we exist?

I did not find an answer (no shame there considering that the answer has eluded minds far greater than mine for centuries). However, I did form a rather useless ghazal (unsurprisingly composed mostly of questions) that I present below:

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Amusing Musings for the Muse · Poetry, History, Literature, Arts, Technology, The reasons behind why people do the things they do, Being good, Being evil, Right and wrong, Morality, Finally stop being lazy and getting some work done!